How Advantage Renewables Manages a Nationwide Portfolio with Glint Solar

Backed by Advantage Capital and guided by values of speed, creativity, and collaboration, the team operates a national pipeline using a lean, distributed model. They work closely with landowners, farmers, and community members to bring sustainable energy projects to life. But to keep pace with their ambition, especially with a small team, they needed more than just
ambition. They needed a smarter, faster way to manage data, evaluate land, and collaborate on
opportunities.

The Challenge: A Rigid System Stifling a Dynamic Team

At the heart of Advantage Renewables’ challenge was a fundamental mismatch: their dynamic, creative development model was constrained by inflexible software.

This problem manifested in two distinct ways. First, their previous GIS platform’s project interface was rigid, making it difficult to model and compare different land acquisition scenarios within a single project. Second, the platform’s portfolio tracking structure was equally inflexible, failing to meet the team’s needs. This rigidity led the team to adopt a separate spreadsheet to get the flexibility they required for project tracking. However, this created a new set of problems. Because the spreadsheet was disconnected from their primary workspace, team adoption was low, leading to:

• Fragmented Data: Project information lived in multiple places, resulting in stale records, poor visibility for leadership, and a critical loss of institutional knowledge.

• Wasted Effort: Lacking a structured project memory, the team often re-evaluated the same sites, wasting time on leads they had already passed on.

• Inefficient Collaboration: Handoffs were clunky, and with data scattered, it was
  impossible to get a clear, up-to-date picture of the entire portfolio.
  
• Discouraged Creativity: Modeling different land scenarios was extremely time-
  consuming, discouraging developers from testing alternative site configurations and
  creative parcel combinations.
  

While these symptoms looked like separate problems, they all pointed to one root issue: a lack
of flexible, centralized workflows to support a team built for speed and ambition.

The Solution: A Centralized Hub for Speed and Collaboration

Advantage Renewables chose Glint Solar to transform its operations from the ground up. They
needed more than a simple tool replacement; they needed a strategic platform that worked the
way their team did - quickly, flexibly and intuitively.

Glint Solar immediately replaced their inflexible GIS tool and their failed spreadsheet. With a
dynamic, map-based platform, customizable project structures, and live collaboration, Glint
Solar empowered the team to work their way, without compromising on data integrity.
Key transformations included:

• A Single Source of Truth: The team now uses GlintSolar's Company Dashboard and
  Custom Properties to replace their spreadsheet. They track every prospect's lead,
  technology, capacity, market, land acquisition status, and land partner directly within the
  platform. "I realized... it can all live in Glint" says Thomas McNailen, Project Developer at Advantage Renewables. This is the new single source of truth that drives their weekly meetings.

• Instant Scenario Modeling: Developers now model and adjust site layouts, exclusion
  zones, and land configurations in real time. The team uses different Site Plans and
  Folders to toggle groups of parcels on and off, allowing them to model and compare
  different land acquisition proposals for landowners in minutes. This ability to explore
  more creative options increases their probability of closing complex land positions.

• A Hub for M&A: A significant part of their workflow is M&A prospecting. When the team
  receives a teaser or shapefile, they immediately go to Glint Solar to find the asset, evaluate it,
  and track it as a new project.

• Structured Project Memory: Critical decisions, rationale, and context are now captured
  directly within the platform, eliminating re-evaluations and preserving institutional
  knowledge.

"Anyone on the team can open a project and instantly understand where things stand. That's huge for our collaboration and speed" says Thomas.

The Results: A Quantum Leap in Productivity and Strategic Focus

By implementing Glint Solar, Advantage Renewables didn't just fix operational headaches -  they unlocked a new level of performance and strategic capability. The impact was felt across the
entire development lifecycle.

Empowering Developers, Freeing Engineers

The single biggest impact was a massive win for developer empowerment and resource
optimization. Developers now use Glint Solar's  analysis tool for their own initial layouts to get the
preliminary capacity of a project. The engineering team embeds their requirements directly into
the analysis parameters, trusting the tool for early-stage evaluation. This change empowers the
development team to move faster on new opportunities and frees up the resource-constrained
engineering team to focus on higher-value tasks.

From Data Chaos to Board-Level Clarity

Glint Solar's new role as the central portfolio management hub has provided unprecedented clarity, both for internal management and external reporting. "It's very material to us" Thomas says, noting that the clear, filterable dashboard view is now a key part of their quarterly reporting to our board.

This new framework also drives accountability. It provides the visibility to manage the "stop-start" nature of greenfield prospecting. By reviewing active projects in Glint Solar weekly, the team can identify stalled projects, ensure follow-ups aren't missed, and collaborate on making
progress on the right priorities.

This shift to a centralized, efficient platform allows management to make better strategic
decisions. By eliminating double-work and preventing time wasted on previously disqualified
leads, Advantage Renewables increases its output and project velocity with the same lean
team.

The Bottom Line

Doing more with less is the hallmark of an efficient team. For Advantage Renewables, success
depends on operating with maximum intelligence and speed. Glint Solar provided the critical
infrastructure they needed to turn their strategic model into a competitive advantage. By
centralizing data, accelerating workflows, and fostering collaboration, Glint empowers them to
scale their impact without scaling their headcount.

“We’re trying to punch above our weight class and Glint Solar helps us do that.” - Thomas McNailen.

To learn more about Charts, be sure to check out our Product Release article here.